Pit Fiend

PIT FIEND DISCORD discord.link/pitfiend COME ARGUE WITH ME

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My memory of Deadlights is from my days as a starving uni student, moshing to metalcore sets at midnight at Snitch and Thriller full of five dollar drinks. Deadlights were a staple support for a lot of the heavy bands that came through Brisbane, and I always had fun at their shows, but there were a lot of good support bands at that time. It’s hard to pick which bands will make it and which won’t, especially since being really good does not a successful band make. This means that Deadlights have been around for a while, at least as early as 2012 that I remember, though they only signed with Greyscale in 2017. Off of the massive success of their debut album on Greyscale, they… continued to be a solid local support band. Remember, Deadlights were also the headline act at the all ages show I discovered Stepson and Days Like These at, and it was organised by vocalist Dylan Davidson. It seemed entirely within reason that they never wanted to see serious national success. They released a couple of singles in 2019, but didn’t seem to show any inclination that a blow up was imminent.

PIT FIEND DISCORD discord.link/pitfiend COME ARGUE WITH ME

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The System is Racist and Oppressive is probably best thought of as a song in the same vein as The Opener. I think Antagonist A.D. would have to be pretty game to introduce a conversation like racism into a mostly white audience if they didn’t really mean it. The song is obviously inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and the associated activity here in Australia and in their home country of New Zealand looking to highlight the disadvantage of and, in many cases, open racism against, Aboriginal and Maori people today. The Australian story is even more damning than the Kiwi story, but it’s not great over there. Maoris only make up 16% of the population but represent 50% of all deaths in custody. Antagonist A.D. are definitely not writing a protest song intended to be heard by a country on the other side of the world.

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I’ve been seeing some commentary across the great wide Internet about people feeling like they don’t belong when they go to shows. Maybe more people are going to shows for the first time since not much else is on, or maybe there’s more people returning to it, or maybe we’re less willing to accept what’s always been as what always should be after a year away from it. I don’t think these feelings are something we should ignore. This is an issue that we’ve always had, and it’s something the genre and the subculture do by design. Sometimes it can feel very much like everyone else is different from you and so aren’t going to accept you, and that you’re more like an outsider than a participant. It’s especially true if you don’t like the idea of throwing down in the mosh pit, and if you ended up going alone for whatever reason.

A Day To Remember were my gateway drug to an ever-steeper descent into this weird and wonderful world of heavy music.  A Day To Remember are sort of… baby’s first hardcore band. They released one of the best albums of my era, Homesick, which still holds a special place in my vinyl cabinet. One of my first mosh pit experiences would have been their set at Soundwave here in Brisbane over a decade ago. We played Downfall of us All at my wedding. I like the band. I’m not completely ignorant of the patchiness of their career, however - I still don’t think their follow-up What Separates Me From You was all that good, and the less said about their most recent album Bad Vibrations the better. I didn’t really have high expectations for the album I will be talking about today, You’re Welcome.

By comparison, who on earth is Machine Gun Kelly, and why is he releasing tracks with Travis Barker? Some zoomer-era soundcloud rapper released a Sum 41 cover album and now everyone’s supposed to care? 

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Since Rumours just released their debut EP, If Only You Could Feel Something, assuming it’s any good I’d like to give them an uncomfortably humid Queensland welcome by knowing at least some of the lyrics. I do love finding new bands and seeing what Australia can produce, especially since we seem to have the world’s best heavy music at the moment.

Stepson caught me by surprise at an all ages show in the Gabba a couple of years ago. The lack of all ages shows was, and remains, an ongoing concern among the Brisbane scene. On the Sunshine Coast about an hour north, I was going to shows as young as fourteen or fifteen years old. I was introduced to an entirely new subculture, to dozens of new friends from different schools and different backgrounds, and to the idea that maybe it’s okay to be different from whatever my perception of “normal” was. As an adult I’m keen to support any attempt by anyone to stimulate an all ages scene in Brisbane. The fact is there’s just less money in it, but this is exactly where local bands can do what labels or bigger bands can’t. Maybe Northlane can’t justify an All Ages show when they tour through Brisbane - but for a band like Stepson, they can.

One of the hardest things to explain to normies is why anyone would want to listen to someone screaming. This is especially true with the more abrasive subgenres of our wonderful scene; it’s easy to get someone to understand how you can get into Stand Atlantic or even Hands Like Houses, but how do you explain to Nanna that the new single by Thy Art Is Murder is a proper banger? At the very least, I think our collective Nannas have a reasonable point, so I’d like to talk a little bit about what we love about this bizarre subculture and what makes it important. I’m not going to give a history lesson on punk and metal, because I think there are better sources than me for that. I’m just going to be using a lens that covers our lived experience as adults who never outgrew our emo phase.

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Slowly Slowly have been a part of my life for longer than some of my friends. They’re a key way that I can communicate with my partner through music as she slowly grows out of her emo phase and I grow into mine. Our record collections are entirely different and only a few albums sit in the “us” category. Slowly Slowly take up a large proportion of that esteemed position, in no small part because we physically own their entire discography with the exception of their 7” split with Luca Brasi. We’re also fans of vocalist Ben Stewart’s pop side project, Congrats. In fact when he supported Trophy Eyes, we were - and remain - convinced that as a one-man-band he put on the better live show. It was not at all out of character for us to snap up a copy of the new Race Car Blues Extended Edition as soon as it went on sale, certain that Slowly Slowly could do no wrong.

This is a special belated Christmas episode where we’ll cover some of the close runners for 2020 Album of the Year, a handful of releases that almost slipped under my radar and almost definitely slipped under yours, and finally we’ll crown the Pit Friend Album of the Year, which is by far the most definitive.

Features in this episode:

Clarity by Vilify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4OYGN3CLcGzHsmy5bUsnW7?si=yIrIRRotQ32pyG-V-muLwg

Fatalist by Future Static: https://open.spotify.com/album/0bi4ruzUyQG4BuYXDNZkcX?si=p3T8VnPKTv6wExXnmgnIXA

Ghost by Lune: https://open.spotify.com/album/0gf4WVF5NT7kYvM9xgbHF9?si=kcUkDePUTjmvdUTCxVGsbw

Fever Dreams by Banks Arcade: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Tiul8V3qpr6o4I62Lo5xQ?si=OXTW03DJR1OIANzZfLPWaA

While Pit Fiend is meant to highlight Australian music, I’m a huge Bring Me fanboy and I’ve been devouring the singles in advance of the new EP Post Human: Survival Horror. Now that it’s out, I think this EP is even better than it seems on first listen, and I’m going to spend longer talking about it than any sane person should. Anthony Fantano covered this in nine minutes… but he’s nowhere near the emo that I am.

I’ve been a huge Alpha Wolf fan since their debut album Mono. After they changed their lineup in 2018, which we’ll come back to, I was tentatively optimistic about their sound moving forward. Alpha Wolf have been a big deal for a long time, touring with some big names. I’ve seen them play live once when they were in the unenviable position of sharing a lineup with Polaris and Crystal Lake. I had a few too many Windjammers that night but I had taken away a general feeling of being a little underwhelmed. With the release of A Quiet Place To Die, I was deeply hoping for the realisation of all the potential that Mono promised.

Yours Truly have been around for a few years now, forming in 2016 and coming out the gate fast with great critical acclaim on 2017 EP Too Late For Apologies. They really blew up off the back of 2018 single High Hopes in support of their 2019 EP Afterglow. Afterglow received massive critical acclaim, scoring nearly perfect scores, or in one case an actual perfect score, with real music journalists Australia-wide. I can say personally that all of my mates rate Yours Truly really highly as well. With the announcement of debut album Self Care only a year after Afterglow, the hype across the internet and among my mates has reached a fever pitch.